Your human animal needs to eat, sleep, poop, pee, have sex and express your emotions, which are really just the ephemeral consequences of your hormonal state in any given moment.

My goal is to empower you to make peace with all of yourself – your human spirit as well as your human animal.

We think that if we go to college, spend years in church or synagogue or some other spiritual institution that we can overcome the effect of hormones. But we can’t. We can never eliminate our human animal, as long as we are alive.

What I see is a huge amount of shame, disconnection and misunderstanding about our human animal.

People feel ashamed that their body does not look the way they think it should look. Hormones actually determine where you store fat cells, so if your hormones are out of balance your body will be displaying this fact. You could feel ashamed that you actually need to eat food, or even the fact that you ate food or how much or what you ate, that you needed to poop or pee or that you want to have sex, all of which, once again, are a normal, natural and healthy consequence of having a body.

Shame is the lowest possible vibration of emotions and leads to a process of self destruction.

It is very important, in my opinion, to let go of our shame about this aspect of ourselves, our human animal.

I know of a man who prayed and meditated for years, hoping that if he could only become enlightened enough, his sex drive would go away.

I have a very good friend who has endured multiple operations that have had the net effect of removing all her female organs, including her breasts and her ovaries.

One of my clients, during our very first visit, was explaining to me that he had suffered from multiple injections for pain in his pelvis, all of which stemmed from his earlier days as a highly sexually active individual.

If we are to be truly healthy and happy, it is important that we accept all of who we are.

And part of the way you can accept who you are is by understanding your hormones. Your hormonal state in any given moment is a major predictor of how you will behave.

If your insulin level is too high, you will be hungry all the time.

If you don’t want to be hungry all the time, you will want to learn how to eat in certain ways to keep your insulin more balanced.

If you have even normal levels of testosterone, you will have a pretty good sex drive.

If you take antidepressants, those psychiatric medications cause your body to release enzymes that convert your testosterone to estrogen. So that is one reason that both men and women on antidepressants tend to have a lower sex drive.

And if you are exceptionally healthy, whether you are a man or a woman, you will have higher testosterone. I can’t tell you how many healthy men and women I have explained this to. They felt guilty and they really shouldn’t have felt guilty.

Whether you are a man or a woman, when you have sex, your body releases oxytocin, which makes you feel connected to whomever gave you the orgasm.

Estrogen enhances the effects of oxytocin, so when women have sex, their brains lead them to believe that this is the guy they should marry and make babies with.

Testosterone counteracts the effects of oxytocin, so men will feel connected only 2 or 3 days afterwards.

As women go into menopause and their estrogen levels drop, they behave more like men and are less likely to get hooked, hormonally speaking.

And as men age and their testosterone levels drop, they still need to have sex but they will be less likely to need multiple sex partners.

If your stress level is high, your cortisol level will be higher than normal. Cortisol kills brain cells, making it hard for you to think straight, remember or learn when you are stressed.

Next time you go into judgment about your own behavior, ask yourself what was going on with you hormonally speaking at the time. Hopefully you will be able to forgive yourself and make peace with your human animal, because shame is so destructive on every level.